372 Rajendralala Mitra— On a STcanda Gup/a Inscription. [No. 4, 
different starting point to that of the latter, would be a mere assertion quite 
unsupported by proof, and opposed to every legitimate argument. 
According to Abu Raihan the Gupta-kdla reckons from the year 241 of 
the S'aka era = A. C. 319, and if this could be accepted as correct, and we 
could assume that the era of the inscription under notice was the Gupta-kala, 
its date would be A. C. 465; but as Abu Raihan’s statement as preserved 
for us is hopelessly corrupt, and there is not a scintilla of proof to 
show that the Guptas used the so-called Gupta era, this assumption can¬ 
not be taken for granted. I am not disposed to reject altogether the state¬ 
ment of Abu Raihan, for however corrupt the passage, the fact of the 
Gupta and the Ballabhi eras being the same may be correct. Seeing that 
the Gupta era was current only over a small area in the Western Presiden¬ 
cy, and that during the supremacy of the Ballabhi kings, the idea strikes 
me that the Ballabhi kings, having expelled the Guptas from Gujarat, start¬ 
ed an era to commemorate the event, just as S'akaditya had done two hun¬ 
dred and forty-one years before them after expelling the S'akas from northern 
India, and the era was optionally called Ballabhi or Gupta. And as Abu 
Raihan gathered his information in Western India, he was right in sa} r ing 
that the era dated from the extinction of the Guptas, meaning their expul¬ 
sion from Gujarat, without implying their total annihilation. This theory 
affords a very plausible solution of the question ; but I must leave 
it aside for further research ; the more so as two such distinguished Indian 
archaeologists as General Cunningham and Mr. Thomas are engaged in dis¬ 
cussion on the subject, and it is quite unnecessary for me to join issue with 
either of the disputants. I need here only observe that my own conviction 
is that the era of the Chandra Gupta inscriptions of Sanchi, of the Skanda 
Gupta inscriptions of Junagarh, Kuhaon, and Indor, of the Budha Gupta 
inscription of Eran, and of the Hasfcin inscriptions, are all dated in the S'aka 
era which being current and well known, needed no special specification, and 
is accordingly indicated by the word Samvatsara, which means “ a year” and 
not an era, as it has been erroneously supposed by some. The aptote noun 
samvat also originally meant a year, but it has been so uniformly used in 
connexion with the era of Vikramaditya, that the secondary meaning must 
now be accepted as the right one. When the abbreviation occurs in an 
inscription, it may mean the samvat or Samvatsara, and therefore it would 
be unsafe to take it for samvat for certain. There are many unquestionable 
instances in which it has been used for other than the Samvat. Under 
this conviction I accept the record under notice to be sixteen hundred and 
fifty years old, or, in other words, to date from 224 of the Christian era, and 
that Skanda Gupta was then a reigning sovereign, whose sway extended 
from Gujarat to Anupsliahar on the Ganges. 
